Category Archives: News Media

They Must Really Be Mad

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Howard Kurtz did something remarkable in his column today. Here are the first few paragraphs; see if you can spot what it is.

The media are getting mad.

Whether it’s the latest back-and-forth over attack ads, the silly lipstick flap or the continuing debate over Sarah and sexism, you can just feel the tension level rising several notches.

Maybe it’s a sense that this is crunch time, that the election is on the line, that the press is being manipulated (not that there’s anything new about that).

News outlets are increasingly challenging false or questionable claims by the McCain campaign, whether it’s the ad accusing Obama of supporting sex-ed for kindergartners (the Illinois legislation clearly describes “age-appropriate” programs) or Palin’s repeated boast that she stopped the Bridge to Nowhere (after she had supported it, and after Congress had effectively killed the specific earmark).

The McCain camp has already accused the MSM of trying to “destroy” the governor of Alaska. So any challenge to her record or her veracity can now be cast as the product of an oh-so-unfair press. Which, needless to say, doesn’t exactly please reporters, and makes the whole hanging-with-McCain-on-the-Straight-Talk era seem 100 years ago.

It goes on like that. I kept scanning the paragraphs for the “balance” section — You know, the part that says “The Obama campaign likewise accused Governor Palin of [some trivial thing taken out of context and blown up into a controversy], so it’s just as bad, blah blah blah.”

It turned up, finally, in the 14th paragraph, and even there Kurtz was quoting someone else. The point is that the first 13 paragraphs are about the lies coming from the McCain campaign, and only the McCain campaign. This is extremely unusual behavior coming from Kurtz, long a reliable tool for the Right. Usually, when the Republicans do something outrageously bad, the first 13 paragraphs of his column are about why it’s the Democrats’ fault.

The media must really be mad.

The wingnuts are calling Kurtz’s column a “descent into madness” and an example of “rabid partisanship for Obama.” That Kurtz, for once, is just plain telling the straight-up truth is not considered, nor have I found any rightie blogger who could refute the facts damning McCain in Kurtz’s column. Some things don’t change.

The Children’s Hour

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The future of humanity, and possibly of our planet, may hinge on the results of the November election. And this being America, the campaign has devolved into adolescent accusations that one candidate called another candidate a “pig.”

I can pretty much guarantee that many hours of television programming today will be dedicated to serious discussion of whether Barack Obama intentionally called Sarah Palin a “pig” — a phony controversy generated by the McCain campaign that could be dismissed in a few seconds with a simple review of what Barack Obama actually said.

I can pretty much guarantee that at no time today will any of the major cable news networks dedicate even a few seconds to substantive discussion of the candidates’ positions on health care, even though Americans place health care very high on their list of concerns.

The McCain campaign consists mostly of frantically throwing red herrings in all directions, hoping no one notices that John McCain and his moose-shootin’ sidekick have no idea how they might govern. And this is working very well for them, it seems. The American public has gotten so used to content-free campaigns they think this is normal.

Over the years Americans have been conditioned to respect utter nonsense, because they see our national leaders and the “pundits” in mass media respecting utter nonsense. If by some miracle we woke up tomorrow morning in a world where our leaders were engaged in sincere, factual, and substantive discussion of issues, most Americans would be dumbfounded.

Because of the way Americans hold elections and declare winners, it is impossible for a third party to challenge the Big Two. And one of the Big Two has become more of a social pathology than a party. The American Right has taken over the Republican Party, and the American Right does not want to govern. It wants to destroy. Years of cheap political demagoguery have filled a large part of the American public with a seething resentment of just about everything — other nations, racial minorities, religious diversity, cultural diversity, intellectuals, the poor. And on and on.

Most of all, they resent American liberalism, which these days seems to be defined as “any doctrine that calls for running the government responsibly and in a way that addresses the real-world needs of American citizens.” Can’t have that.

Many Democrats have contributed to this sorry mess, of course. But, basically, we’re looking at America’s extreme Right; the descendants of Richard Hofstadter’s pseudo-conservatives. These are the people of whom Hofstadter wrote back in the early 1960s,

The difference between conservatism as a set of doctrines whose validity is established by polemics, and conservatism as a set of rules whose validity is to be established by their usability in government, is not a difference in nuance, but of fundamental substance.

Today’s Republican Party is entirely about polemics. It has nothing to offer in the way of responsible government, either in domestic programs or foreign policy, but fantasy narratives, tired slogans and ideas that have already failed. No amount of real-world examples showing why their ideology is inapplicable to governing can sway them.

Hofstadter continued, quoting Theodore W. Adorno:

“The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.”

And finally,

Writing in 1954, at the peak of the McCarthyist period, I suggested that the American right wing could best be understood not as a neo-fascist movement girding itself for the conquest of power but as a persistent and effective minority whose main threat was in its power to create “a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible.”

Back in 1954, Hofstadter didn’t believe pseudo-conservatives would ever win elections. Here his vision failed him. Because once they had created “a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible,” they were able to win elections.

What Hofstadter didn’t foresee was that in the 1970s pseudo-conservatism would join forces with old money — right-wing family foundations and wealthy individuals — to build a media message machine that would utterly confound rational political discourse in America.

Thus, in November, Americans will march to the polls without having once had the candidates’ stands on issues clearly and factually and un-hysterically explained to them.

It’s true that citizens can learn a lot by reading candidates’ web sites and party platforms, if they bothered to go there. But most won’t. And many have bought into America’s whackjob political culture and don’t see why it should change.

Worst of all, after more than 25 years of nonstop right-wing demagoguery coming at them from every media outlet, Americans have been conditioned into a kind of learned helplessness. Government doesn’t work. We mustn’t even think about using government to solve national problems, because it won’t. We’re on our own. That’s the American way.

See also: Read Jonathan Freedland, then take a glance at some of the typically adolescent wingnut reaction to Freedland. I don’t need to comment; it all speaks for itself.

Update: See Glenn Greenwald.

Update: The wingnuts are in such a state of hysteria they twist obvious compliments into insults.

Update: Joe Klein is disgusted. A miracle.

So Much for Freedom of the Press

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This year MSNBC canceled that useless tool Tucker Carlson, and they’ve given Rachel Maddow her own program. But Brian Stelter at the New York Times reports that MSNBC has taken two steps back.

MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.

Just about everyone on any political cable program is “politically incendiary.” But if you’re a politically incendiary right-winger, you’re OK.

That experiment appears to be over.

After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.

I was watching MSNBC through both conventions. The real fireworks usually were between Pat Buchanan and Rachel Maddow. I assume from this that Olbermann and Matthews will still be present, just not anchoring.

The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left.

“The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming,” said Davidson Goldin, formerly the editorial director of MSNBC and a co-founder of the reputation management firm DolceGoldin.

Again, the fact that most cable news presented little else but an unfiltered right-wing view for years was not controversial.

Rightie bloggers are doing a victory dance. Only their point of view is allowed on national media. Free speech? Ha.

Digby:

It was obviously also a result of the spitting and hissing between the two anchors during the coverage, but it’s pretty clear that NBC is taking some serious heat from the GOP and this is, after all, the house that Jack built. They’ll keep Matthews and Olberman on, of course, and they’ve added Maddow. But the word has gone forth and there will be adjustments, many of them small and nearly subconscious. They will hardly even know they’re doing it.

Cartoon Candidates

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Today I heard someone say, earnestly, that if John McCain wants to win in November he should give up the silly “celebrity” attack ads and run on his positions on issues. What a charming idea!

Of course, it’s not going to happen.

McCain cannot run on issues because (1) he genuinely doesn’t want the American people to know his stands on issues, because he is way to the right of most people on most issues; and (2) Republicans don’t run on issues. Not for president, anyway. They run by smearing the Dem and turning him into a cartoon.

Some of you may remember that at one point during the 2004 campaign, several of us bloggers noticed that Kerry’s web site featured Kerry’s positions on issues, whereas the Bush web site was saturated with several cartoon drawings of Kerry. (I made a screen capture of this that I cannot find now. It seems to have disappeared from my archives, alas.) Not a single substantive policy position could be found, beyond “stay the course.”

And, notice who “won.”

As I remember it, about 95 percent of the Bush 2004 campaign consisted of ridiculing John Kerry. Republicans wore band aids to the Republican convention to ridicule Kerry’s Vietnam War injuries. GOP operatives were sent to Kerry rallies to wave “flip flops.” (Dem operatives, of course, were locked out of Bush rallies.) Once, after a story came out about Kerry going duck hunting, I recall Karl Rove and Karen Hughes popping out of Air Force One wearing duck hunting gear, complete with “Elmer Fudd” ear flap hats.

And, of course, the lazy sots that comprise “U.S. news media” covered the buffoonery and not the issues.

This strategy almost backfired. Dana Milbank wrote in the Washington Post (“Bush’s Cartoon of Kerry Failed to Show Up,” October 15, 2004):

By turning Kerry into a cartoon, the Bush campaign created such low expectations for the senator that he easily exceeded them in the debates.

Leading up to the first debate, the Bush campaign very effectively defined John Kerry as a wishy-washy flip-flopper who never knew where he stood, and then they get on the stage and here’s a John Kerry who differs from the perception,” said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster.

Marshall Wittmann, a former aide to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) now with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, said Bush had gone “over the top” in making Kerry seem ridiculous.

“It was a case of taking a caricature to such an extent and not realizing the caricature could be disassembled by the candidate himself in the debates,” he said. “You would have expected a hybrid of Jane Fonda and Ted Kennedy would walk on stage. . . . People expected to see a left-wing, beaded radical.”

If the election had been held immediately after any of the three debates, I believe the outcome would have been different. However, by the time election day came, the GOP successfully had re-booted the cartoon Kerry in enough of the public’s mind to keep Bush in the White House. (With some help with the shenanigans in Ohio, of course.)

So, expect McCain ads to do little else but lie about and ridicule Obama. Why tamper with success?

The swift boaters are back, too. Jerome Corsi has a new book out called Obama Nation (cute) that promises to do to Obama what Unfit for Command did to Kerry. Jim Rutenberg and Julie Bosman write for the New York Times:

Significant parts of the book, whose subtitle is “Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality,” have already been challenged as misleading or false in the days since its debut on Aug. 1. Nonetheless, it is to make its first appearance on The New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction hardcovers this Sunday — at No. 1.

The book is being pushed along by a large volume of bulk sales, intense voter interest in Mr. Obama and a broad marketing campaign that has already included 100 author interviews with talk radio hosts across the country, like Sean Hannity and G. Gordon Liddy, Mr. Corsi said on Tuesday.

That’s the plan. Write a book full of reckless and unsupported charges, kick it up the bestsellers lists with bulk sales by right-wing interests, then make the rounds of cable television and talk radio to “discuss” the book. It’s an effective way to spread lies and propaganda.

Fixed Noise

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Fox News Host Refuses To Talk About Russia-Georgia War, Insists On Covering Edwards’ Affair»

Of course. The Carpetbagger:

After noting why the Edwards affair will probably have no bearing on the presidential race, Erbe said, “On the other hand, we have these huge stories going on like the one you’re reporting in Georgia, where you have both candidates, McCain and Obama, taking positions that the American public wants to know more about.”

Jarrett ignores Erbe’s response, and starts bashing Edwards again, asking Erbe to note whether Edwards might still be lying about the circumstances of his affair. Ebre said it was possible, and suggested Edwards could go on Maury Povich’s trashy daytime talk show to talk about it. “The American public have told pollsters, this political season they want substance,” Erbe insisted. “Both these candidates have expressed support for allowing Georgia into NATO, for example. We are bound by treaty to attack anybody who attacks a NATO member. We could have been on the verge of nuclear war. Those are the kinds of the things that the American public wants to see discussed.”

At that point, Fox News’ Jarrett responded, “Right. You know, but getting back to Edwards, during the Monica Lewinsky affair, Edwards absolutely ripped into Bill Clinton….”

War Over Ossetia

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CNN reports that Georgia’s parliament approved a request by President Mikhail Saakashvili’s to declare a “state of war” with Russia. This is not the same thing as declaring war itself, apparently, nor does it impose martial law. However,

It gives Saakashvili powers he would not ordinarily have, such as issuing curfews, restricting the movement of people, or limiting commercial activities, those officials said.

Whatever. This is a serious matter, and you know the cable news channels will be covering …

John Edwards. Cernig writes,

Unbe-fricking-leivable! I am now officially disgusted with America’s insular and navel-gazing punditry. En masse and on a bipartisan basis the media, commentators and bloggers have decided that the Edwards Affair story is more important than events in South Ossetia. What happened, folks, did your minds cloud over at contemplation of events beyond these hallowed shores?

See also “Why TV news in the US is utter rubbish.”

I Can’t Look

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Watching politics these days, for me, is like watching the scariest, ickiest part of a scary, icky movie. This is the part where the cute, blond starlet doesn’t know the creepy thing that ripped all her friends’ heads off and sucked out their brains is right behind her. I much prefer movies with singing and dancing cartoon animals to scary, icky movies, and if I’m in a theater watching something scary and icky usually I don’t watch. I’ll look away or take my glasses off or something.

As I said, politics is like that these days. I don’t want to watch. The thing that rips off heads and sucks out brains, a.k.a. the Republican Party, is too close.

The GOP campaigns for the White House — and other elected offices — by turning the Democrat into a cartoon. They’re really good at that. It doesn’t matter who the Dems nominate; they could nominate Jesus, and the GOP would turn Jesus into a cartoon. And they hammer, hammer, hammer the cartoon Dem candidate into the voters’ heads, and if enough voters buy the message, the GOP wins the election without actually having to talk about, you know, issues.

Now we’re seeing what sort of cartoon they want Barack Obama to be. Carrie Budoff Brown writes,

Barack Obama’s critics laid down the foundations of the strategy months ago: The Republican National Committee started the “Audacity Watch” back in April, and Karl Rove later fueled the attack by describing the first-term Illinois senator as “coolly arrogant.”

It wasn’t until the last week, however, that the narrative of Obama as a president-in-waiting — and perhaps getting impatient in that waiting — began reverberating beyond the inboxes of Washington operatives and journalists. …

… And the snickers about Obama’s perceived smugness may have a very real political impact as McCain’s camp launched its most forceful effort yet to define him negatively. It released a TV ad Wednesday describing Obama as the “biggest celebrity in the world,” comparable to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, stars who are famous for attitude rather than accomplishments.

The harsher treatment from comedians and columnists — coupled with the shift by McCain from attacking on policy to character issues — underscores the fine line that Obama is walking between confident and cocky. Once at pains to present himself as presidential, Obama now faces criticism for doing it too well.

Jonathan Singer writes at MyDD that the McCain “Obama is arrogant” message is for media and Washington insiders, not voters. But if the McCain camp can sell this to media and Washington insiders, it’ll trickle down to voters eventually.

Here’s Obama’s response. You will need to be familiar with this to understand the next turn in the plot:

“John McCain right now, he’s spending an awful lot of time talking about me,” Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said today in Rolla, Mo. “You notice that? I haven’t seen an ad yet where he talks about what he’s gonna do. And the reason is because those folks know they don’t have any good answers, they know they’ve had their turn over the last eight years and made a mess of things. They know that you’re not real happy with them.”

Obama continued: “And so the only way they figure they’re going to win this election is if they make you scared of me. So what they’re saying is, ‘Well, we know we’re not very good but you can’t risk electing Obama. You know, he’s new, he’s… doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency, you know, he’s got a, he’s got a funny name.’

“I mean, that’s basically the argument — he’s too risky,” Obama said, per ABC News’ Sunlen Miller. “But think about it, what’s the bigger risk? Us deciding that we’re going to come together to bring about real change in America or continuing to do same things with the same folks in the same ways that we know have not worked? I mean, are we really going to do the same stuff that we’ve been doing over the last eight years? … That’s a risk we cannot afford. The stakes are too high.”

Jake Tapper, who needs to retire, reads between the lines of Obama’s response and projects onto it a whole lot of subtext that I don’t see, and comes up with this conclusion:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but does it not seem as if Obama just said McCain and his campaign — presumably the “they” in this construct — are saying that Obama shouldn’t be elected because he’s a risk because he’s black and has a foreign-sounding name?

Do you see what Tapper sees in Obama’s response? Because I sure don’t see it. But of course now the McCain campaign is whining that Obama is playing the “race card.”

If there is one thing Obama has been very cautious about, it’s bringing race into the campaign. As I’ve written before, he goes out of his way not to be the “black candidate.” He and his surrogates have brought up race occasionally, when they had to, but they drop it quickly.

Obama has also worked very hard not to display anger throughout his campaign; the cool demeanor may or may not be the “real” Obama, but he is incredibly disciplined about keeping his cool. And that’s because he understands that there are whites who can like a nice black man, but who will run screaming from an angry black man, even if the black man has plenty to be angry about.

So what’s left? Since the old angry black man stereotype wouldn’t work, the GOP has reached even deeper into white America’s racial memory and brought forth — the uppity black man stereotype.

Yes, Obama is a confident man. Think about it; is he somehow more confident than, say, Ronald Reagan? or John Kennedy, if you are old enough to remember John Kennedy? Or Bill Clinton? When you think about those pols from the past, and their public personas, is Barack Obama’s public persona in any appreciable way different? If it is, I’m not seeing it.

So, although the Barack Obama campaign did not accuse McCain of playing on racism — I am.

And what’s with the two white chicks — Paris Hilton and Britney Spears — the “celebrity” ad somehow associates with Obama? The subliminal message is too obvious — he’s not only an uppity black man; he’s an uppity black man being associated with two sexually available white women.

And just how stupid are “pundits” like Tapper not to see this?

But most of them don’t see it, or won’t, and so the dippy young starlet cheerfully walks down the dark alley with the brain-sucking thing right behind her. And I can’t look.

More Media Mayhem

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Michael Grunwald writes for Time that, by any previous predictive measure, the McCain candidacy ought to be toast. However,

It’s also unwise to underestimate the hunger of the media for an exciting race. … The media will try to preserve the illusion of a toss-up; you’ll keep seeing “Obama Leads, But Voters Have Concerns” headlines.

Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei write for the Politico that “McCain gaffes pile up; critics pile on,” but the fact is that McCain’s “gaffes” — which are about big honking geopolitical matters like where Pakistan is — aren’t drawing nearly as much attention as inconsequential stuff Al Gore didn’t even say back in 2000.

The wingnuts are still hyperventilating about John McCain’s “rejected” op ed about Iraq, in which McCain tried to get by with bashing Obama instead of explaining his own position.

Today I learned that a “humor” piece someone wrote about Netroots Nation was “spiked,” and Michelle Malkin says, “So, not only are we not allowed to make fun of Barack Obama, but it appears that liberals in the media have also made ridiculing the left-wing blogosphere off-limits.”

I didn’t go to Netroots Nation this year, I regret, but had I been there I’m sure I could have written something humorous and fun-poking about it. The problem with the “humorous” piece that was ripped down from the website of the Austin American Statesman is that it wasn’t a bit funny. It was just mean. Right-wing humor, in other words. (IMO actual, unvarnished ridicule is rarely funny.)

Malkin has a big chunk of it on her website. But if you want to get the Cliff’s Notes version, see Greg Mitchell at Daily Kos. My impression is that the “writer” of the piece built it entirely from ancient stereotypes of “leftists” without bothering to pull his head out of his ass long enough to notice if the stereotypes still apply.

Genuine wit reveals something real. As Mark Twain said, “Humor is the good natured side of a truth.”

The part of the spiked piece that most offended me is “Pelosi is so far left her title should include (D-Beijing).” Pelosi has shown more cojones, as it were, in speaking out against Beijing and its Tibet policies than any Republican I can think of.

That’s why it wasn’t funny.